The Power of Team Leadership - by George Barna

The Power of Team Leadership: Achieving Success Through Shared Responsibility (Barna Reports)is a must-read for those transitioning to ministry teams

I like George Barna. I like the fact that he's able to get down and dirty with all of the empirical evidence he gathers from his surveys. And I like the fact that he can then step back to show the reader the big picture of what he's really talking about.

This book is no exception. In it, Barna starts out by analyzing why ministry isn't getting done in the local church. He has facts, figures, and percentages. Then he moves on to tell us about churches that are getting ministry done. It turns out that they have moved away from solo (superstar) leadership and into team-based ministry.

When I opened the book to read it, I was a little surprised to see underlined passages and stars and question marks in the margins. And then I realized...these are MY pencil markings. Apparently, I read the book back in 2001 or 2002, before I was even seriously thinking about changing my church over from solo-leadership to team-based ministry.

But as I read, I thought, "I know this stuff..." I guess I have been sub-consciously implementing Cornerstone's ministry teams according to the principles and practices outlined in this book! Last year, Cornerstone started transitioning to ministry teams with the help of the Ministry Advantage Pastor's Coaching System. Our transition has gone very well so far (not to imply that the transition is over or perfect).

This book is exactly what I needed to read right now. And I think I will be using a couple of the chapters as reference material for the next few months as we formalize communications processes and do more intentional leadership training. There's also a chapter on Team Territory Land Mines. I suppose it would be helpful to memorize that one.

I know this book should probably get most of the credit (since I had read it before), but I really did feel quite gratified to read that Cornerstone's team transition is on track with what Barna suggests and predicts. Huzzah!

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P.S. The word "qualitative" on page 15 (point 3), should read "quantitative."